re: Bitcoin will ruin people(Posted by SlowFlowPro on 3/29/13 at 9:10 pm to C)

quote: people are not using bit coins to exchange goods and services. They are hoarding them to inflate the price.

then it's a bubble, not a ponzi scheme. it will pop

quote:Some are being exchanged to conduct illegal activity or gamble

or for sites like wordpress. other sites are following suit

quote:The current expansion is all about the perception of use but not reality.

and that's a bubble. it will pop like all bubbles

but if i know it costs 0.1 BTC to get a girl to take nudes for me, and i know that i can get 0.1 BTC for $5, i know that i have to decide if it's worth $5 to get these nudes. i'm not subject to a ponzi scheme if i know the values going in and DO use it as a method of exchange

Bitcoin has a group of adopters, who I think for the most part have honest intentions, convincing people to convert dollars (or goods and services) into digital currency. A currency that will soon be worthless. The late adopters however will be left with no cash and worthless computer code. So other than honest intentions, how is this unlike Madoff?

And the developers, who obviously were very skilled programmers, left themselves no way to hack into their own product at a later date without being discovered?

Sorry counselor, I don't trust unknown people on the other side of the world enough to believe that. I predict this scam will go down as the biggest computer based fraud ever devised.

ETA: I find it ironic that the same people on here who distrust public officials with long records of public service, including academia, explicitly trust people they've never heard of and who may never have their idenities revealed.

quote:this is a niche market. you don't think the market would react long before this scenario arose?

EXACTLY!!! This is the whole point of the discussion. The market will react to this being a scam, and bitcoins will be worthless.

quote:if the early adopters are hoarding the BTC, then the value of the BTC they're hoarding is artificially diminished.

In Bitcoin theory it is completely opposite. The value would deflate not inflate as you assume.

But yes, if the hoarders tried to sell off all of their BTC at once the value would inflate. But they would have made money (or received goods) from what they had before the selloff. However everyone else that bought into it late would have seen the value of their high priced BTC drop to almost worthless. So early adopter makes money. Late adopter loses money. You almost spelled it out yourself.

they find weaknesses in the ways to enter the system, typically. i'm not a programmer but i don't think these exist here

many times hackers get in via human error. either a disgruntled ex-employee gives access or they trick an employee through old means (telephone calls often) to get access information. sometimes there are viruses set that have keyloggers.

quote: if the hoarders tried to sell off all of their BTC at once the value would inflate.

quote: However everyone else that bought into it late would have seen the value of their high priced BTC drop to almost worthless.

these 2 sentences do not work together

if the early adopters are hoarding BTC, they're hoarding something that has no cash value

if they sell off the BTC to take advantage of the market prices, the market prices will increase

if people are buying BTC, those who bought BTC prior to the early adopter selloff would have their BTC raise in value

if the early adopters sell off all of their BTC, they're no longer hoarding BTC and can't affect the market

if the early adopters hoard until the end, the people at the end will be buying from the early adopters (since they'll be the ones holding BTC). then the early adopters cash out, but they're no longer hoarding BTC, so the value will not only go up, but the threat of hoarding is eliminated

quote:they find weaknesses in the ways to enter the system, typically. i'm not a programmer but i don't think these exist here

many times hackers get in via human error. either a disgruntled ex-employee gives access or they trick an employee through old means (telephone calls often) to get access information. sometimes there are viruses set that have keyloggers.

it's usually not like tv/movies make it seem

It's funny to watch morons like LSURussian fumble around and try to understand technology.

There are certainly things to be debated about bitcoin, but the technology behind it isn't one of them.

quote:So you assume the BC original developers could not have left a planned "weakness" in their program that they could later exploit?

it's very possible, but i'd imagine that it would have been found by now. a bunch of hackers have examined the code and none have found these weaknesses. it's always possible they all missed something, though

i'll put it this way. this is the currency of hackers. they wouldn't be messing with it if the code was exploitable within their means, because they'd be putting their "stash" at risk, too. see what i mean?

quote:It's funny to watch morons like LSURussian fumble around and try to understand technology

Is it as funny as watching you try to read a financial statement of a company like Apple? I hope so because I nearly busted a gut laughing at your attempt to explain Apple's stock issuance structure earlier in this thread.

quote:ETA: I find it ironic that the same people on here who distrust public officials with long records of public service, including academia, explicitly trust people they've never heard of and who may never have their idenities revealed.

This

Most of the time I just lurk. And for the most part I agree with everyone in this threads opinions. For most of the people that have responded contrary to the original post I think that they fundamentally believe that hard work is the way to get ahead. However, when it comes to this Bitcoin issue, they don't seem to understand that some computer programmer (if his program were to succeed for its fundamental purpose) will eventually become the wealthiest person in history for simply writing some code over the course of a weekend. His idea isn't even very unique it is just another form of fiat currency.

And don't bring up computer programer = Bill Gates. He sold a product and continuously worked to improve it.